The Walking Dead: World Beyond is simply not very good

The Hollywood Reporter

"Timing and brand equity play a big role in the success or failure of any spinoff," says Daniel Fienberg. "If The Walking Dead: World Beyond had premiered maybe five years ago, my review probably would have been something along the lines of, 'It's not very good, but I'm invested enough in the show's world that a glimpse of a different corner of that world inherently interests me.' Heck, I made it through nearly two seasons of Fear the Walking Dead on residual curiosity, and even then I didn't make it to the point where people I trust allege that it got good, or at least better. But Fear the Walking Dead numbed some of my engrossment and the wheel-spinning of the Walking Dead mothership blunted most of the rest. Spinoffs require runway and World Beyond, which has no direct narrative or character connections to The Walking Dead, has basically none. It just isn't very good."

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• Walking Dead: World Beyond is "undead" on arrival: "The siblings and their guy pals are yin and yang stereotypes written in what the kids in The Breakfast Club would’ve dismissed as 'the simplest terms," says Charlie Mason. "Future conflicts and revelations are telegraphed with all the subtlety of pianos being dropped on our heads. And at the end of the hour, I just didn’t care what happened to any of the main characters."
• World Beyond shows potential: "This is not a perfect series: The shots of the undead often look cheap and the rules of how these monsters are evaded have never felt more loosely applied," says Daniel D'Addario. "And yet there’s a willingness to reinvent, to genuinely probe a corner of the universe previously untouched, that makes this series feel serious in its intent and, for fans of the forerunning series, well worth checking out. Its willingness to place two young women at its center, and to make their emotional response to family upheaval the story of the apocalypse, shows a curiosity worth crediting."